Interest in mosquito ecology and the use of appropriate sampling methods began early in the 19th century with the discovery that mosquitoes could act as vectors of diseases to humans and domestic animals. Resting mosquitoes in houses and animal quarters are typically caught using manual or mechanical aspirators or by knock down spray collections. Historically, the simplest and most widely used aspirator was made of plastic or glass tubing with a piece of mosquito netting taped over one end. Mosquitoes are orally sucked into the aspirator and then gently blown into a suitable storage container. However, the practice of collecting mosquitoes by sucking them into aspirators is no longer permitted due to biosafety concerns. Prolonged inhalation of mosquito scales, dust, and other fine debris may cause or aggravate allergies.
Other types of aspirators include small battery-powered devices where suction is produced by high-speed rotation of a plastic or metal fan or gasoline powered aspirators that create a vacuum designed for sucking mosquitoes into a netted container.
Although a wide variety of traps have been proposed, most have biases towards certain types of mosquitoes, such as mosquitoes in host-seeking mode, only females, only egg-laying females, etc. The objective of sampling resting mosquitoes eliminates most biases, because all mosquitoes, regardless of physiological stage, must rest each day. However, searches for outdoor resting mosquitoes have frequently proved time-consuming and unrewarding. Thus, it is desirable to have a low-cost device for collecting mosquitoes that samples an unbiased cross-section of physiological stages within the adult mosquito population in such a manner to permit quantitative comparisons among samples.